Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printed material processing device and a non-transitory recording medium storing a computer readable program, and more particularly to a technology for correctly determining whether a printed material is valid.
Description of the Related Art
Printed materials with high monetary values, such as paid tickets, need to be managed under strict rules. To add more value of a ticket, the appearance of the printing surface of the ticket is also important.
A color image forming device such as an electrophotographic image forming device fully satisfies the requirements for achieving a beautiful printing surface. However, image defects, such as smudge, blurring, and missing characters, occur at a certain rate, and therefore, each printed material needs to be examined for defects
For printed materials with such high values, a mechanism needs to be developed so that defective printed materials determined to be defective in examination will not be inadvertently distributed.
For example, there is a known technique by which a mark indicating that a defective printed material is invalid is printed, or a defective printed material is blacked out, or a mark indicating a defect is printed outside the print area (see JP 9-240120 A).
Further, there is the need for a mechanism for assessing authenticity of valid printed materials. For example, there is a known technique by which the image information about the mark printed on each printed material is stored in a server. When authenticity of a printed material is assessed, the image information about a predetermined portion of the printed material is transmitted to an authenticity assessment center, and the level of coincidence between the transmitted image information and the image information stored in the server is assessed (see JP 2012-61840 A).
By the technique disclosed in JP 9-240120 A, a mark indicating that a printed material is defective can be added. In some cases, however, it is difficult to accurately distinguish a defective ticket from a valid ticket inadvertently defaced by the ticket holder. If defective printed materials are distributed, some of them might be used without any problem. Furthermore, as emphasis is put on the beauty of each printed material, a printed material having even a tiny defect is detected as an invalid printed material at the time of examination. Eventually, a large number of print defects are detected, leading to increases in loss and costs.
To prevent unauthorized distribution of defective printed materials, a system may be developed to instantly shred a printed material from which a print defect is detected. However, in a case where label printing is performed on roll paper, or where tickets are collectively printed on a single paper sheet, large print loss occurs, resulting in a problem.
To prohibit reuse of a defective printed material, the entire surface of the ticket may be completely blacked out. However, due to the blacking out, the non-defective printed materials adjacent to the defective printed material might be smudged, and an extra material for the blacking out (such as ink or toner) is required, for example. In view of this, there is a demand for measures against unauthorized distribution of defective printed materials.
By the technique disclosed in JP 2012-61840 A, on the other hand, authenticity of a non-defective printed material is determined from feature information obtained from a predetermined portion of the printed material. Therefore, similar characteristics are often observed. To accurately identify these characteristics, it is necessary to store a large amount of information into a verification information server, and obtain highly precise image information at the time of authenticity assessment (validity determination). As a result, an extra load is put on the user who operates the system involving tickets as the printed materials, the determination device, and the verification information server. Furthermore, when there is no network environments to connect to a verification information server, authenticity assessment (validity determination) cannot be conducted.